


A Giant, Frozen

by VespidaeQueen



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-03
Updated: 2013-08-03
Packaged: 2017-12-22 08:16:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/910950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VespidaeQueen/pseuds/VespidaeQueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the early forties, they find something under the ice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Giant, Frozen

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt: How about Jan & Steve, in an AU in which she was frozen for decades and he's the one that finds her in the ice"

At first, they don’t know what they’re seeing, just something large and indistinct beneath the ice. Morita thinks it’s something Hydra’s cooked up, something that they’ve hidden under the ice. An underground complex, maybe, housing who knows what.

When they get closer, though, the indistinct shape beneath the ice starts to take form. Something very large, something black and gold. Then the sun hits at the right angle and Steve’s eyes go wide. He swears, and it’s uncharacteristic enough of him to draw everyone’s attention.

"I know who that is," he says, and unslings his shield, striding up to the glacier.

“ _Who?_ " Dugan says, and his confusion is evident until they all get close enough to see. When he swears, it’s with far more colorful words than Steve used.

There is a woman beneath the ice, larger than any human has a right to be, curled in on herself, lost beneath the ice. 

Steve chips away at the ice with his shield, spurred on by  _something_. He wonders if a misplaced strike will shatter her, her body turned to glass by the cold.

He remembers stories of her. The Giant Woman, the wife of an entomologist who’d become something strange and wonderful after a laboratory accident. And now Steve’s found her body, decades after anyone last saw her, trapped beneath the ice.

The ice falls away, piece by piece, until he’s broken through. Sunlight falls on a skin, the first light to touch her without the barrier of ice in years. For a moment, everything is still.

And then something happens and her body  _shrinks_. The ice is stable enough that it holds, though Steve’s feet slip on the edge of the ice sheet and it’s only by digging in his shield that he doesn’t fall. Once he’s found his footing, he looks into the cavern left by the body and sees nothing.

No, not nothing. Something small, at the very bottom, and he hauls himself through the opening he’s created and skids down the side until he finds her, a tiny little thing now, small enough to fit into the palm of his hand. With careful fingers he picks her up, unbelieving, because how can she be here - the Giant Woman, the Wasp - and how can she - is it possible that she is -

She moves. Twitches. Somehow still alive, maybe her massive size having helped to keep the ice away from her heart, he doesn’t know. But held in his cupped hands, she thaws out until she looks up at him, blinking, confused.

And then she yells something that sounds like  _Henry? Where is Henry?_  and zaps Steve in the face.


End file.
